The Equations of Love (28 page)

Lilly flushed ever so little all over her pale face and shook her head.

“Ah, I thought not,” said Mr. Sprockett, feeling pleased with himself. “Or your son-in-law? Is he a nice fella?”

“Paul’s lovely,” said Lilly with something near enthusiasm.

“Well, then,” said Mr. Sprockett, speaking rather like an uncle, “wouldn’t they want to help you, if it’s money, I mean?”

“Oh yes,” said Lilly, “that’s it. I don’t want them to.” (“I thought as much,” nodded Mr. Sprockett.) Lilly felt that she had better explain, although she was not much good at explaining.

“I came east in a hurry. My sister was sick and I nursed her and she died.” (Lilly was familiar with life and death, and in her experience people used no euphemisms about death; they did not pass on, over, or away, they simply died.) “And after my sister died I was sick. I guess I was tired out, and when I got everything fixed up there wasn’t much money,” (How clear it all became to Mr. Sprockett, listening as he watched Lilly, with her worn and pretty face with its agreeable snub nose, sitting there and telling her simple lies) “and I knew I could get a job like that tempory, so I thought I’d save a bit before I went home. Eleanor doesn’t know. I didn’t even tell her her aunty died after all or I was sick. She just thinks I’m staying at her aunty’s place. There’s no reason why they should worry now. I’ll tell them some day. They’d send me the money to go home sure, but they got three little kids. I’ll soon have enough to go home on my own. Paul’s doing fine but it costs money to get on, and I got my health,” and she stopped.

Mr. Sprockett was touched. “You’re a very very fine woman, Mrs. Hughes, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Oh no,” said Lilly simply, without argument.

“And do you live with your dotter, Mrs. Hughes?”

“No, I work. Up the Valley.”

“Work?”

“I help Matron in the hospital there.”

“You a nurse?” respectfully.

“No. But I guess I can do anything round a hospital. I worked with Matron there for getting on twenty-five years or more.” There was no boasting in Lilly’s talk, simply a statement of fact while she ate her dinner, and a statement of fact that happened to be also a statement of character.

“Is
that
right!” said Mr. Sprockett, feeling more respectful every minute.

Lilly was not expert in communication, and did not try to draw Mr. Sprockett out although it would have been easy. But as soon as Mr. Sprockett’s curiosity about Lilly was satisfied he began, naturally, to talk about himself.

He talked about Bessy, her illness, death and burial. He told Mrs. Hughes where he first met Bessy, what she wore, liked, cooked, ate, about his Order and her Lodge, about the boys (most of whom were now bald boys), and the girls (most of whom were now grey girls). Lilly did not respond very much; she ate with care; listened; and became a well into which Mr. Sprockett poured himself.

“And now,” he said, “I can see perfectly well, the boys are kind of ganging up on me. I guess the girls are behind it. And I know they mean well. I might under sim’lar circumstances do the same myself. But it just goes to show they don’t understand, not till they’ve been through it like me – and like you, Mrs. Hughes.” Lilly nodded. “You can take a horse to the water I always say, but you can’t make it drink. Mrs. Sprockett was always one for being lively and the house feels just terrible. I can’t hardly stand the thought of going back home. There’s the Aldridge girls that Mrs. Sprockett went to school with, and sometimes I get thinking I’d better settle for one of the Aldridge girls though I must say I wouldn’t for choice. I guess, Mrs. Hughes, you being an attractive woman, there’s more than once you been approached on the subject of matrimony since your husband passed on?”

“Yes,” said Lilly.

“And might I ask,” said Mr. Sprockett, leaning across the steaming plates, “what it was stopped you marrying some nice fella? I bet I could tell you.”

“I always felt that Mr. Hughes …” began Lilly, and stopped. There was no reason why she should not be frank,
because, come to think of it, Eleanor was the reason why she had not married, Eleanor and the desire that Lilly had to possess herself.

“It was my daughter,” she said. “I wanted her brought up like so, and if I married they mightn’t have liked each other. So I worked and gave her an edjcation. Mr. Hughes’ family was edjcated and a bit high steppers and I hadn’t what you’d call an edjcation myself and I wanted Eleanor should have everything in the way of an edjcation. And she did.”

“I knew! I knew!” said Mr. Sprockett. “You sacrificed yourself on the altar of … You’re a very very lovely woman, Mrs. Hughes. You’ve had a hard life and come through!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lilly. “It’s been kinda happy too.”

M
r. Sprockett arose the next morning in a state of exhilaration such as he had not known for years and years and years. It was quite different from his normal arising of several decades, except perhaps when he and Bessy were going on a holiday. His normal awakening was into optimism, flecked sometimes by business cares, and was followed at once by dressing and shaving noisily and cheerfully while Bessy made kitchen clatter, calling or, rather, shrieking to him sometimes from kitchen to bathroom. And since then there had been this interminable interval of horrible awakenings into emptiness and silence, alone in the bed, the room, the house, the void. And today a feeling of hope, some kind of hope, any kind of hope.

He made his plans for the day, and arranged that he should encounter Mrs. Hughes in the hotel corridor, which he did. Lilly was moving between bedrooms and carried a bundle of crumpled sheets. She looked at him over the bundle of sheets. She was as trim and neat this morning in her white cotton working dress as she had been last night in
her elegant black. A warm and pleased feeling came over Lilly when Mr. Sprockett accosted her genially in the hall.

“Well, and how are we this morning,” he enquired heartily.

Lilly’s lips moved in a smile. “Fine,” she said.

“I’m off in a hurry,” said Mr. Sprockett looking down at his watch. “I gotta lot to catch up today before I leave tomorrow. I thought if you are free to have dinner with me again tonight it would certny make a nice little windup for me before leaving Tronno – that is to say if convenient to
you
.”

Lilly and Mr. Sprockett had progressed last night into that pleasant stream-fed meadow-land in which men and women find themselves, where no names are used, a place of more or less magical anonymity which words do not describe. Sometimes you return to the street names and shop names of daily living. Less frequently, but sometimes in nearly every life, progress is made further into personally owned and fenced-in territory. They had not arrived there yet.

Lilly said “I’d be glad to.”

“Fine … fine …” said Mr. Sprockett, “same place, same time.” He said this beaming and with emphasis, and went hurriedly on his way down the hall. Lilly disposed of the laundry and entered the next bedroom, feeling different.

Mr. Sprockett was not quite honest with Lilly. He had now no intention of leaving Toronto the next day. It would all depend on his own finesse, on Lilly’s disposition, and on luck. He was excited.

When Lilly entered McCloskey’s that night, no poet would have called her a startled deer – a deer perhaps, but a self-possessed deer that Mr. Sprockett did not wish to frighten. They sat down.

“Well well well, feels kind of nice, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Sprockett snugly.

Lilly thought He
is
a nice man, and smiled. The smile softened and lit her face.

“My my, I hope you don’t mind me saying,” said Mr. Sprockett, leaning forward with oh so happy and shining a look upon him as if he had been polished, “but you do have pretty teeth!”

Words from the days when Mrs. Butler read and taught old tales to Eleanor floated up in Lilly’s mind.

“All the better to eat you with,” she said unexpectedly and was astounded at herself.

At this they both laughed and laughed, and the feeling that had pervaded Mr. Sprockett for the last twenty-four hours pulsed more strongly up from his feet, to his stomach, and flowed out to the end of his fingers but particularly into his head and face.

“Would you mind if I ast you your name, your Christian name?” he said.

“Lilly,” said Lilly.

“Lily, Lily!” he repeated, seeing lilies. This woman was perfect! The voice of a spirit in his brain said Lily Sprockett Lilian Sprockett Lily Sprockett Lilian Sprockett. “Would you mind me calling you Lilian? I always thought it was a very handsome name.”

“No,” said Lilly, “I wouldn’t mind.”

The waiter stood over them. Mr. Sprockett ordered shrewdly. When the waiter had left, Mr. Sprockett knew that he had a good long time to talk without interruption.

“When I told you this morning that I was going to Winnapeg tomorrow that wasn’t strictly true. I been very busy today finding out certain things and I find that … I find that … Well, I’ll tell you.” He looked earnestly at his fingers and Lilly looked at them too. Then he looked up and spoke in
a serious voice. He had mastered the excitement that possessed him because you have to do these things properly. “If you and I were to get married right here in Tronno – and go back home and settle right in at the house it would be wonder ful, wonderful! Now just a minute just a minute … all Mrs. Sprockett’s and my friends would be crazy about you and …” his voice was tender, “I’ll say this now and I’ll not say it again … I have a feel that Bessy would be kind of pleased it was you and not one of the girls.
Now
…” he said in his ordinary voice.

“But what about the Aldridge girls?”

“I don’t
haf
ta marry the Aldridge girls,” he said vehemently. “That’s just one of the things I don’t want to do!” and he looked urgently at Lilly.

Her lips moved.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Lilly.

Mr. Sprockett’s happy look faded. Lilly knew that he thought that she did not know what to answer, but she meant that she did not know how to answer him. He looked very anxious.

“I don’t mean what you mean,” she said, “I just don’t know what to say.” She looked at her lap.

Truly it seemed a long time to Mr. Sprockett that he sat there suffused by wavering emotions as he waited for Lilly’s answer to him. Between the putting of a proposal of marriage and the Yes or the No, the interval is forever and intolerable. Lilly took a long time to answer him, long by the clock, and immeasurable to Mr. Sprockett.

She wished to marry him. She had never hoped so high. But her almost fatal caution made her pause to examine. Could there be any flaw, or any possibility of discovery that still might wreck her – and him? She thought not. She felt
that this man was kinder, perhaps, than any man that she had ever known, and he was hers for a look or the speaking of a word. She recognized, of course, that not only herself had charmed him, but that he had turned to her in his extremity. She knew now that when he had first addressed her, only yesterday, he was desperately trying to dodge the future towards which he was compelled to turn again. The taste had gone out of his life. He was cornered. And then he met her. He’d never have turned to me so quick if he hadn’t been unhappy, she thought … and I can make him happy, and comfortable too … him happy, and me … why, I’ve never been to say happy like that, have I, in my life. While these thoughts threaded light and quick through Lilly’s mind and she still sat silent, looking downwards, the man opposite to her grew more gloomy. But she had not finished yet. Every moment brought her nearer to her answer, for herself yes, and yes again and again. But the old habits of mind and heart that rushed first to the care of her daughter, and then to Matron, still delayed her. Yet she knew before she asked herself the question that this marriage would not divide her from her children. She would be proud of it, and they would be glad for her. And as she thought Perhaps by and by he’d let Matron come and stay with us for a bit and I could look after her, the soft look that came on her face caused the fog of Mr. Sprockett’s gloom to lift a little. Before ever she said a word to the man who was waiting on the other side of the table, she wanted to call to Eleanor, and to Paul, and to Matron at once, and again and again, joyfully, “I am going to marry Mr. Sprockett!” She looked up at him with a look that seemed to be, that was, for him only.

“Will you tell me this, then? Could you love me, d’you think?” asked Mr. Sprockett, speaking very low.

Lilly examined this question. If loving Mr. Sprockett meant looking after him and thinking for him and caring for him and guarding him from harm and keeping things nice like she’d always done for Eleanor and for Matron, then she could love him, and she was his, and he was hers.

“Yes, I could,” she said. Then she said with a faint and apologetic smile “I could make you very comfortable too.”

This simple statement caused Mr. Sprockett so much rapture that he cursed himself that he had not deferred the whole of this conversation until after dinner, because he wanted to kiss Lilly for saying that, and here came the waiter. He felt that, failing putting his arms round her which was not very easy at the table at McCloskey’s, he must make some kind of declaration, so after an interval he said solemnly “You have made me a very happy man.”

Lilly was happy too, happier than she had ever been and with a different variety of happiness. Perhaps what she chiefly felt was gratitude but she did not enquire of herself. She had the same kind of confidence in Mr. Sprockett that she had in Matron with the added pleasure that he was a man. She would be without fear; nothing, surely, could touch her now. There would be security and a life of her very own in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Sprockett. She would be content that she should share a ménage à trois with Bessy Sprockett and her husband. But still two shadows fell upon her, one small, one great.

Mr. Sprockett saw that Lilly was about to speak, and he held back the stream of information that was bubbling for release.

She spoke slowly.